The Offspring (vocalist Dexter Holland pictured) released its third and biggest selling record, “Smash,” on April 8, 1994. It was a big year for music as several iconic albums of the era were released including Green Day's “Dookie,” Nine Inch Nails' “The Downward Spiral,” Soundgarden's “Superunknown,” Bad Religion's “Stranger Than Fiction,” Bush's “Sixteen Stone,” Pearl Jam's “Vitalogy” and NOFX's “Punk in Drublic.”

The Offspring (vocalist Dexter Holland pictured) received the OC Impact award from the annual OC Music Awards in 2014. Past recipients include Social Distortion, Lit, Sugar Ray, Thrice and the Vandals.

In 2009, the Offspring set out on tour with Street Dogs and Alkaline Trio, including a stop at the venue once again called Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. The tour title can't be printed – we'll just call it the (Stuff) is (Messed) Up tour in support of its album “Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace.”

The Offspring (vocalist Brian “Dexter” Holland, left, and Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman) celebrated the 20th anniversary of its third and biggest selling record, “Smash,” with a hometown show at Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa in 2014.

Offspring bassist Greg Kriesel (left) went to high school with vocalist Dexter Holland (right). Both guys graduated from Pacifica High School in Garden Grove.

The Offspring circa 2000 when it was preparing to release “Conspiracy of One,” which featured “Original Prankster,” “Want You Bad” and “Million Miles Away.”

The Offspring formed in 1984 and the band released its self-titled debut in 1989 on Nemesis Records. It went on to sell about 3,000 copies.

It's safe to say that the members of the Offspring have never been fashion icons. It looks like Noodles swapped outfits with Aaron Barrett of Reel Big Fish for this gig at the Hollywood Palladium in 1997.

Drummer Pete Parada joined the Offspring in 2007. Before he had served time in Face to Face and Saves the Day.

The Offspring played the second day of the Holiday Havoc fest, held at Angel Stadium in Anaheim in 2004. It was joined by the Buzzcocks, Pennywise and the Distillers.

The Offspring played a special show at the Palace in Hollywood just before the release of its fifth studio album, “Americana,” in 1998 which featured the singles “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy),” “Why Don't You Get a Job?” and “The Kids Aren't Alright.”

At the time the Offspring's career-launching record, “Smash,” had come out in 1994, Noodles was still a janitor for the Garden Grove Unified School District and Dexter was close to finishing up his Ph.D. Since it was the band's third effort, and the first two did just so-so, their biggest fear was “Are we going to have to get real jobs?” The eventual answer was, no, they did not.

A decade ago, Offspring frontman Dexter Holland created his very own brand of hot sauce dubbed Gringo Bandito, which are now available and distributed nationwide as well as in Australia, Japan, Canada, Germany, Finland, Belgium and Hungary. It comes in regular red hot sauce, green hot sauce and now super hot. The green sauce tastes amazing on chicken tacos and the red really zings up scrambled eggs.

Did you know Dexter's real name is Brian Keith Holland? And Noodles is actually Kevin Wasserman?

The Offspring (vocalist Dexter Holland pictured) celebrated the 20th anniversary of its third and biggest selling record, “Smash,” with a hometown show at Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa in 2014. That album spawned several radio hits, still in heavy rotation today, including “Come Out and Play,” “Self Esteem” and “Gotta Get Away.”

The Offspring received the OC Impact Award from the annual OC Music Awards in 2014. Before the ceremony, held at City National Grove of Anaheim last year, Dexter Holland shared with the Orange County Register: “It's very flattering. It's amazing, but I also don't believe it. The bands that are my heroes – like T.S.O.L., the Ramones, Dead Kennedys or AC/DC, bands that are very, very famous – those bands are on a pedestal for me. I can't picture myself being that to somebody else.”

For members of the Offspring, who have toured around the world a dozen times over, nothing can quite compare to a hometown gig. The quartet, which formed in Garden Grove in 1984, has celebrated some of its biggest milestones with audiences right here in Southern California.

The band commemorated the 20th anniversary of its breakthru third album, “Smash,” which spawned still often-heard radio hits such as “Come Out and Play,” “Self Esteem” and “Bad Habit,” last year at a sold-out gig at Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa. Vocalist Brian “Dexter” Holland, guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, bassist Greg Kriesel and drummer Pete Parada are thrilled to return to the venue on Thursday before heading up to the Hollywood Palladium on Friday.

“Last year was just so much fun and the hometown audiences, they’re just crazy,” Wasserman said during a recent phone chat. “There’s so much energy and it’s a good time. There are always so many people that we know there – friends and family we haven’t seen in a while – so everyone wants to come up and say ‘Hi,’ for a minute, which is a little stressful, but when we’re on stage and playing, there really are no better shows. I’m usually relieved when they’re over and to have survived it, but at the same time, I really look forward to them.”

Though playing the Pacific Amphitheatre, which is located on the OC Fair grounds, is an awesome experience, Noodles said, he’s oddly no longer game for pushing through large groups of people to enjoy fair festivities.

“I know, it sounds weird, but as I’ve gotten older I don’t like crowds,” he said with a laugh. “I really like playing shows, but walking around in a crowd like that, I get super claustrophobic or something. I don’t really do the fair and I’m not big on Disneyland either. It’s something you have to do when you have kids though, I have a son who is a teenager, but my daughter is older so at least I don’t have to take her anymore.”

Last year, before the band received the 2014 OC Impact Award at the annual OC Music Awards, held at City National Grove of Anaheim that March, Holland and Wasserman revealed that they’d begun work on the follow-up to 2012’s “Days Go By,” a record that completed the band’s contact with Columbia Records, leaving the Offspring the ability to release singles, EPs or albums on its own. They agreed that the freedom was both terrifying and exciting, and after being out on the Summer Nationals tour with Bad Religion, Pennywise, the Vandals and Stiff Little Fingers, the group worked out a new single, “Coming For You,” which it released on Jan. 30.

The hard-hitting, guitar-heavy track, laced with the band’s signature “Hey, Hey, Hey’s!” shot to No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart and landed in the top 20 on the Alternative Songs list and bounced around in the top 25 on the overall Hot Rock Songs chart for weeks.

“Things are different now for sure, because this is the first time we’ve had a number one mainstream rock song,” he said. “We were up there with Nikki Sixx’s band (Sixx:A.M.), the Pretty Reckless and like Halestorm. That’s a different world for us, so it’s kind of strange to wrap your head around how much stuff has changed since we’ve been successful in this business.”

The accompanying music video, directed by Josh Forbes, who has also crafted videos for acts such as Big Data and Walk the Moon, didn’t sit so well with fans suffering from coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. The idea was sort of a “Fight Club” meets the circus, concocted by Holland and Forbes, who enlisted numerous types of clowns, from kid’s birthday entertainers to rodeo clowns to mimes, all of whom fight, with mostly ridiculous clown props, to the bloody death throughout the video.

“I thought it was pretty funny,” Wasserman said. “But people hate clowns. They hate them. Some people were really turned off by it and they said they couldn’t watch it because of the clowns. My feeling is that yes, there are clowns, but they’re getting their (rear ends) kicked. I’m not afraid of clowns. If I see one, I don’t get scared and run away, but they are pretty damn creepy.”

Though a new full album will not be coming this year, the Offspring do plan on releasing something in 2016. Before then, however, Wasserman said there is a slight possibility fans could be getting another single before the end of the year.

“We definitely want to put out a whole record and we wanted to have it done by the end of the year, but we’ve been redoing our studio and going out on weekend gigs,” he said. “It’s a different day and age in terms of making records, but with the Internet, you can put stuff out whenever you want. Our feeling with putting out ‘Coming For You’ was, why make the fans wait for two years. If we feel like we have something that we feel is good, let’s put it out now.”

Offspring fans are a loyal brood, something its members take to heart. Thousands of diehard followers have been permanently inked with a wide variety of band-related tattoos, ranging from logos and portraits to creatively displaying favorite song lyrics. There are also hundreds of photos that fans have shared of homemade items dedicated to the band, everything from pillows and elaborate paintings and drawings to the band being immortalized in marzipan.

“You know you’ve made it when you’ve been marzipaned,” Wasserman said with a laugh upon hearing about the fan that made and shared Offspring cupcakes, which featured each individual member cut out in marzipan, the sugary goodness used to make shapes on baked goods. “That’s an honor for us to be marzipaned. Not everyone can say that.”

Kelli Skye Fadroski lives for entertainment. She’s worked at The Orange County Register since 2006 and has covered all things music, stand-up comedy, horror and more. When she’s not out reviewing a concert or interviewing some random famous person, she’s catching up on episodes of “The Walking Dead,” somewhere sampling craft beer, enjoying Taco Tuesday or yelling at the contestants through the TV on “Celebrity Name Game” for not knowing basic pop culture trivia. She’s also a diehard Detroit Lions fan.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.